


Five Times Steve Drew James Buchanan Barnes

by rooonil_waazlib



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 16:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1863771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rooonil_waazlib/pseuds/rooonil_waazlib
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Steve Rogers drew Bucky Barnes, and one time Bucky caught him at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Steve Drew James Buchanan Barnes

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the [StarSpangledExchange](http://starspangledexchange.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr!
> 
> Written for [msbeeinmybonnet](http://msbeeinmybonnet.tumblr.com/).
> 
> My username on Tumblr is [rooonil-waazlib](http://rooonil-waazlib.tumblr.com/).

**1**

Steve shifts around in his seat, propping one foot against the bedside table.  He and Sam have finally found Bucky, after months of searching, in a back alley, beaten and drugged.  They had called in Natasha, and between the three of them they had managed to get Bucky back to New York.

Now Steve sits beside his own bed—a hospital had seemed too public, what with SHIELD’s dismantling—and watches as Bucky sleeps off the last of whatever drug had been in his system.  It’s been six days since they’d found him, and he’s only just showing signs of coming back their direction.

Sketchbook open on his lap, Steve stares at his best friend.  They’ve washed off the black charcoal smudged across his face, combed out his long hair.  Like this, it seems like they’ve washed away all evidence of Hydra.

They haven’t, of course, which is why Bucky’s tied down.

Steve doesn’t draw the handcuffs, just Bucky, his face serene in a sleep too drugged for dreams.  He looks just the way he had when they were young, and sharing a one-bedroom apartment to save money.  Then, too, Steve had sat up at night, hunger gnawing at him, watching Bucky’s chest fill and empty.

When Bucky wakes, Steve expects anger, and an attempt to fight the bonds.  He’s thrown off-guard when instead Bucky wakes with a whimper.  He doesn’t try and pull himself free, and when his eyes turn finally to Steve his eyes are terrified, filled with tears.

“You,” he whispers.

Steve sets aside his sketchbook, because he doesn’t need a drawing to remember that expression.  “Hey, Bucky.”

*

**2**

The first time Bucky laughs, it’s nearly three months later.  It’s just a chuckle, really.  But it’s something.  It’s Sunday morning, their day off from running, and Steve has made pancakes.  On Bucky’s he places two slices of banana and a smile made of chocolate chips.

Bucky snorts, and it’s this face, sort of wearily amused, that Steve draws.  With the sunlight shining in through the big kitchen window, Bucky’s dark eyes are sort of golden.  Even with his best paints, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t get the color quite right.  He looks up at Steve, and in this quiet voice like he doesn’t want to break the spell, he says, “You’re so—so _optimistic_.”

Sitting down next to him with his own big pile of pancakes, Steve shrugs.  “Just like old times, huh?”

“Guess so,” Bucky agrees, picking up the maple syrup that Steve’s warmed up and pouring nearly half the jar onto his pancakes.

Later, when Steve’s drawing Bucky’s laughter, he pays careful attention to the long stream of amber syrup, the smile on Bucky’s plump mouth.  Everything else seems just right: the crinkle of Bucky’s nose and the tiny squint at his eyes.  Even the relaxed curve of his wrist as he pours the syrup.  Everything except the eyes that aren’t quite the right color, but Steve suspects he’s never going to manage that.  It’s not like he hasn’t spent most of his life trying.

*

**3**

The first Christmas after they find Bucky, Steve agonizes for several weeks over what to get him.  It’s actually Clint who gives him the idea, with his weekly round-up of the cutest puppies on the internet.  Sam tells Steve that a dog would be great for Bucky’s post-Winter Soldier recovery.

After plenty of research, Steve eventually decides to get Bucky a bullmastiff, but when he goes to the breeder, three days before Christmas, and finds a litter of bullmastiff-great Dane puppies that the breeder can’t sell as purebred, he can’t pass up the beautiful black puppy that puts her paw up on his kneecap.

She looks beautiful with a bright red ribbon tied around her neck.  When Steve returns from his very early trip over to Clint and Natasha’s place on Christmas morning, Bucky is still asleep in the guest bedroom.

The puppy noses her way under Bucky’s chin and licks.  “Quit it, Steve,” Bucky mumbles into his arm.  “I’m sleeping.”

The puppy yips, and Bucky jerks up.  This is what Steve draws: Bucky sitting up in bed still looking half-asleep, the metal of his arm stretching partway across his chest, a smile growing on his mouth.  His hair is sticking up on one side and the puppy is wagging her tail, her front paws against his shoulder.  Steve uses watercolors on this drawing, so everything bleeds into itself, making it sort of blurry, and that’s kind of how it feels in his memory.

Bucky names her Eowyn after the warrior woman, and by New Year’s Eve he has her trained not to pee all over their place and also to sit.  He’s still working on the other commands.

*

**4**

When Eowyn gets big enough, Bucky starts taking her with them when they go running.  Bucky runs in a very upright fashion, but Eowyn’s grown lanky and her limbs flap all over the place.  So does her tongue.  She mostly stares up at Bucky as she runs, so she’s sort of lopsided.

It takes Steve forever and at least twenty pieces of paper before he finally gets that drawing to look right.  Bucky is grinning down at Eowyn, something he does much more frequently now, and the leash is slack in his hand because she’s right there next to him.  Steve just uses charcoal for this drawing, so the next time he flips to this page, the whole drawing is smeary and grey.

Steve kind of likes it that way.

*

**5**

Steve’s pretty sure he’s never going to forget how Bucky looks after they kiss for the first time, but he draws it anyway.  Bucky’s just gotten back from taking Eowyn out for a morning run, and he’s sweaty and shirtless when he walks into the kitchen where Steve’s working on pancake batter.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks, because Bucky’s got this weird look on his face, his eyes extra bright.

Bucky walks straight up to him, grabs him by the back of his neck, and drags him down until their mouths collide.  It feels just like it used to, except that back then Steve had been much shorter than Bucky.  When Bucky releases him, he hums and blinks.  “I…okay, Buck,” Steve says, because that’s about all he can think.

Looking away from him, Bucky shuffles back a few feet.  “Sorry,” he mumbles.  “I thought—I remembered that, and I thought.  Well.  I didn’t think you were seeing anyone, so.”

This is the Bucky that Steve draws, hunched down, looking both sheepish and morose, if that’s somehow possible, one hand pulled up protectively against his chest.  What it doesn’t show is the next step, where Steve walks across to Bucky and pulls him into another kiss.  It doesn’t show Bucky’s sharp mewl, the way he presses up into Steve’s arms, the way they stumble into the countertop.  Those are separate drawings, further on in the sketchbook, scattered between half-finished pencil sketches of fingers laced between fingers, and the long lines of Bucky’s chest, eyes scrunched tightly shut, an expressive mouth open, panting.

They stay up most of that night.  Somewhere around two in the morning, while they’re doing little more than laughing about Bucky’s description of himself in the eighties, they finally give in to Eowyn’s whining and let her into the room with them.  They fall asleep this way, all three of them, stretched out over Steve’s big comfy bed.  Steve never decides whether it’s Bucky or Eowyn that’s snoring.

*

**and**

The next morning Bucky catches him drawing, sketching his sleeping form.  With the puppy lying across their legs, neither of them can get up, so he grabs his sketchbook from his bedside table and starts drawing.

Only Bucky wakes halfway through, one of his eyes slipping open and focusing on Steve.  “What is it this time?” he asks, dragging himself a little closer to Steve and resting his head against the crook of Steve’s elbow so he can see the paper.  “Me, again?”

“Well, yeah,” Steve starts, and then realizes exactly what Bucky’s said.  “Wait—what do you mean, _again?_   Have you been looking at my sketchbook?”

Bucky sits back, propped on his elbows, and grins up at Steve.  “You never used to mind,” he says.  “Anyway, you left it lying around.”  They look at each other for a long moment.  “So.  Me, again?”

“Of course, you, again,” Steve grumbles.  He tosses the sketchbook to the floor along with his pencil.  Eowyn briefly looks up at the noise, then settles back in.  “It’s never anything _but_ you.”

Raising his eyebrows, Bucky sinks back down into his pillow and turns onto his side.  “I swear I saw a drawing of Natasha in there at one point,” he says, and watches as Steve joins him in repose.  “Look, I’m just saying, buddy, your sketchbook’s awful full of pictures of me.”

Steve rolls his eyes, nudges Eowyn with his foot until she sits up and crawls up closer to them.  He tugs gently at her ear.  “Bucky, all of the memories you’ve regained so far involve me,” he points out.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, and gives Steve a big grin over Eowyn’s muzzle.  “But you _looooove_ me.”

Steve thinks for a moment.  “So what if I do?” he asks.

For a second, Bucky just smiles at him, then sits up enough that he can lean over Eowyn and give him a long slow kiss.  “So I guess I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Find me on Tumblr!](http://rooonil-waazlib.tumblr.com/)


End file.
